U.N. Inspectors Interview Iraq Scientist

NADIA ABOU EL-MAGD

Published
8:00 pm EST, Thursday, December 26, 2002

Associated Press Writer

U.N. arms experts said they interviewed a scientist possibly linked to a clandestine Iraqi nuclear program Friday. Baghdad officials said the inspectors also scoured sites for signs of suspected weapons of mass destruction.

Officials from the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, quizzed Kazem Mojbal, a metallurgist from the state-run Al-Raya company.

Inspections team spokesman Hiro Ueki said Mojbal gave U.N. officials details about an unidentified Iraqi military program that "has attracted considerable attention as a possible prelude to a clandestine nuclear program."

"The answers will be of great use in completing the IAEA assessment," Ueki said in a statement, a copy of which was faxed to The Associated Press in Baghdad.

A senior source for Iraq's National Monitoring Directorate, the Iraqi body that deals with inspectors, said U.N. officials interviewed Mojbal for an hour at Baghdad's state-owned Al-Rashid hotel. An Iraqi official was present during the interview.

"For sure, I have no relationship with the nuclear program," Mojbal said on state-run television later Friday.

"I became upset during the meeting because they emphasized (providing) names of people," he said. "I'm specialized in minerals and have no relation with the previous (nuclear) program."

In their first session with an Iraqi scientist, U.N. inspectors quizzed a former member of Baghdad's nuclear program on Tuesday. While weapons inspectors have spoken to engineers and experts at sites they have searched, it was the first request to interview a scientist privately.

Under the toughened U.N. inspections regime that resumed Nov. 27, inspectors can speak privately with scientists and workers associated with Iraqi weapons _ and even take them abroad for interviews. U.S. officials have said they hope the privacy will prompt scientists to reveal hidden weapons programs.

Friday marked the end of the first month of resumed U.N. inspections in Iraq after the last group of weapons experts left Iraq in 1998 before U.S. and British warplanes bombed Baghdad for failing to cooperate with the arms inspectors.

Inspectors visited the al-Nasr al-Atheem State Company in Baghdad, a plant for chemical-processing equipment that used to be known as the State Heavy Engineering Company, the Iraqi Information Ministry said.

The visit was a follow-up to one on Dec. 16. The inspectors, who resumed work in Iraq on Nov. 27 after a four-year break, had checked out the site during their inspections in the 1990s.

"The company undertakes a wide range of metal working for both civilian and military purposes," Ueki said in his statement.

Ayad Mohammed Hussein, assistant director of the company, told reporters that al-Nasr served the oil and electricity industries. "We do not have hidden weapons of mass destruction," he said.

In their second visit Friday, the inspectors went to al-Assriya Company, an old Baghdad factory that produces arak _ an anise seed-based spirit that is virtually the national alcoholic beverage of Iraq, the Information Ministry said.

The inspections are being carried out under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 that entitles the inspectors to visit any facility or property at any time. The resolution warns Baghdad of serious consequences if it fails to comply with the inspections.

Also Friday, U.S. defense officials said the Pentagon has ordered the Navy to prepare two aircraft carriers and two amphibious assault vessels for possible action in Iraq.

The orders, sent in the last two days, require the Navy to have the vessels ready to sail to the seas around Iraq within 96 hours after a certain date, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. The ships would bring a powerful military force to the region, adding several warships, scores of strike aircraft and roughly 4,400 Marines to the forces already within striking distance of Iraq.

During the inspections in the 1990s following the Gulf War, the United Nations destroyed tons of Iraqi chemical and biological weapons and dismantled Iraq's nuclear weapons program.

But the inspectors do not believe they found all of Iraq's banned arsenal by the time they left.

In a Friday prayer sermon broadcast live on Iraqi state television, a preacher in a Baghdad mosque railed against U.S. pressure on the country.

"God rescue us from the Americans," Abdel-Razaq Al-Saadi said in the Abdel-Qader Al-Kailani Mosque. "It has become the duty of every Muslim to stand in the face of this American Satan, and to say 'No.'"